It is New Year's Eve.

I am all in a tizzy.

Where oh where is my sequined dress?

Where oh where are my stiletto heels?

Where oh where is my ruby red lipstick?

It's New Year's Eve...

...and I don't know where my finery is.

Oh.

Oh.

Wait.

There is no sequined dress.

There are no stiletto heels.

There is no ruby red lipstick.

I've seen the fancy parties on TV and I even went to one.

Once.

However.

Right now...

There is a nice, soft, well-worn flannel shirt...

...and my new favorite jeans...

...and perhaps a slick of Clinique Black Honey lipstick...

...and then I am good to go.

Mr. Jenny and I will do a celebratory meal at our favorite restaurant.

Tex-Mex with a twist.

Lots of smokey pecan and chipotle flavor.

We will dine around 4 pm.

Early bird specials for us old folks.

We will look at the straggler Christmas lights on the way home.

We will talk of the joys and difficulties of the year past...

...and speak of our hopes and dreams for the year ahead.

We will discuss resetting all of our passwords.

And think of silly names for the newest Grandlittle coming into our lives in March.

We will go to bed at 9:30.

And perhaps I will dream of dancing in Times Square wearing...

a sequined dress with stiletto heels and ruby red lipstick.

Or perhaps I will just dream of my life as it is right now...

Flannel filled, Grandlittle filled, Joy filled and busy!

I hope your New Year's Eve is exactly as you dream tonight.

Whether it involve stiletto heels or not!

Happy 2013.

 

I was reading through New Year's posts past.   This one (click here!) from 2010 really hit me in the heart.

 

Okay.   And this one (click here!) made me laugh.  I'm so weird.

Chaos and Peace

This little SC story is part fiction, part fact. Like many of you, I face Christmas each year with the sad heart of Christmas memories past. Each year I say, “Oh how I miss Christmas when my children were small,” and each year I allow the sadness to creep into what should be a holiday of joy and celebration. I wallow in the emotions for awhile and then pack them carefully away for the following year...like a hated, yet beloved, hair shirt of self torture.

This year I tried very hard to throw all those emotions out along with the piles of discarded wrapping paper.

I suspect those ‘perfect’ Christmases of my memory were not nearly as perfect as I now paint them to be.

I want to start new traditions for Christmas 2012. New things to focus on, new ideas, new ways of allowing myself to rejoice in what is happening in my life RIGHT now. I want to allow myself to feel the excitement and magic of the current moment.

The present is the present...the true gift of my life even though it is so often filled with change and loss and many things beyond my control.

The thing I can control, though, is how I deal with my life each day...and how I deal with Christmases to come.

I can control my choices each day...choose sorrow or choose joy...to look toward the light and find potentials and possibilities or to allow myself to embrace victimhood and wallow in 'ohpoorpoorme' illness.

It is time for a change. For many changes.

I don't know what they all are yet...but I am going along for the ride...I am going to close my eyes and give myself wholly to 2012...unencumbered with the weight of past perceptions and times...unafraid of the 'what if's'.

As a small part of expressing those feelings, here then is my last SC for 2011.

I give it to you in the spirit of hope...and adventure...

I'm looking forward to a 2012 filled with creative endeavors and explorations.

And I hope we continue to share the community of words as the year unfolds.

Hugs and blessings,
Jenny Matlock

Piles of paper, wasted on the floor
The vacant eyes, and the ‘gimme more’s’.
I must oh I must oh I must step away…
…before I’ve lost all the meaning of a true Christmas Day.
I wander the streets and I look in each window…
…ghostlike, I see much less happy than sorrow…
I must oh I must oh I must turn away…
…I’m looking and looking and there’s no Christmas Day.
I feel all the sadness, the loss and the grief…
…the mourning of past times is more than a thief…
I must oh I must oh I must look ahead
…I fear if I don’t my true Christmas is dead…
I look in my heart and my soul for a sign…
…that the Christmas I loved will once more be mine…
And I listened and listened and listened so well…
and finally my message rang clear as a bell…
I can’t look for Christmas in past Christmas days…
…I can’t look for Christmas in the MEMORY of joys…
I opened my heart and my soul for a glimpse
…and I finally remembered just what Christmas is…
I listened and listened and finally rejoiced…
When I heard an angel voice…
through the chaos and the noise.

This post is linked to Week 86 of Saturday Centus. To read other offerings, just click here.

See you next year!

Our Granddaughters are old enough to understand that in a few days the year will start all over again.

"What does this mean?" they ask.

I tell them it is a marker...a passage of time.

They giggle. They say it means they don't have to go to school until next year! Hooray.

I tell them it is more. It is a time of reflection and a time to think of things to make their lives better and the lives of people around them better.

They giggle. They say it means they don't have any homework until next year!

I tell them it is more.

They giggle. They say it means they don't have to clean up the dog poo from the backyard until next year!

I giggle.

I say, "To heck with this! Let's lay in the bed and read books and cuddle up under corduroy quilts and stay cozy!"

They say, "Grandma, maybe you can read us a book about the passage of time."

I don't giggle.

I tell them, "Girls, let's just enjoy right now. Time will pass whether we're thinking about it or not."

I tell them, "Guess what?"

"What, Grandma?" they ask with their eyes all big and blue and innocent and round.

I tell them, "I will love you next year, and the year after that, and the year after that...and forever..."

They cuddle in closer. "I love you more, Grandma," they say in their sweet voices.

And I think inside my heart, "Oh my dear Granddaughters. There is no way that is possible."

Happy New Year dear friends. We may never pass this away again. Let's make 2011 a year that counts.

As the year winds down...

I count my blessings. There are so many.

Living in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

A roof over my head that keeps me warm and dry and safe.

Granddaughters that are the joy of my heart.

A lovely garden, and the ability to walk to it and see the growth and change every single day.

Food, electricity, warmth.

The ability to dream.

The unlimited riches of words...the umlimited horizons that words offer to me.

Friends, old and new. Friends, silver and gold.

Kind words on a sad day.

Choices

A husband who loves me in spite of everything.

Loving myself in spite of everything.

The wealth of possibilities.

The potential of tomorrow.

Living my life every single day.

Facing down fear.

Choosing beauty.

Choosing hope.

Choosing to look up at the sky and find a smile.

Choosing joy.

This post is linked to Alphabe-Thursday's New Years linky. To visit other posts, just click here.

The best New Years resolutions are always...

...the hardest ones to make.

All week I've been trying to come up with the perfect New Years Resolution. One that will change my life! And make me realize the full karma of my potential (or something like that!)

And finally yesterday afternoon something happened that made me shout "EUREKA!" I love that word so much. So I actually shouted it several more times "EUREKA! EUREKA!"

But before I tell you my resolution I need to pinkie swear you into secrecy that you will not tell my Mother about this. It would probably kill her. The shock and all.

OK, well, yea.

I've been thinking since yesterday afternoon that I might be an alcoholic.

Actually I should probably do that officially.

Hi. I'm Jenny. I'm 53 and I think I might be an alcoholic.

The reason I think that is this.

I had a margarita yesterday when my husband took me out for a New Years Eve linner.

Now this might...

What?

Oh. Linner? It's that meal you have when you are getting old and have to combine your lunch and dinner so you can eat by 4 to be in bed by 7.

What was I talking about here?

Oh, yea.

Margarita.

So I had a margarita which pretty much knocked me on my butt.

But I also had a margarita back in April.

Which means I had two for the year.

Which means my alcohol consumption DOUBLED in 2009.

Scary, isn't it?

That fact, coupled with two mistaken alcoholic binges earlier in my life make me... What?

What do you mean how can you have a mistaken alcoholic binge?

OK, if you want the sordid details the first occured when I was barely 19 and went on a honeymoon with my first husband to Florida. First of all at the age of 19 I had never had an alcoholic drink of any kind. Hey, I lived in the country. Don't roll your eyes at me. Who knew that sangria had alcohol in it? Certainly not me.

I just thought it was refreshing and wonderful on a hot, humid Florida evening. Two pitchers of sangria later I found out that throwing up a refreshing beverage was not nearly as fun as consuming it.

Second mistaken alcoholic binge thing was with my second husband. When I was dating him.

Are you seeing a pattern here?

It is disturbing, right?

OK, so we had been dating awhile and I went to Mexico City to visit him. (he was an ex-pat with a Telecom business there)

And he took me to a fancy restaurant that served supposedly the best tequila in Mexico. And the coolest thing was it came with these little tiny glasses of this spicy stuff called sangrita. Which I loved. And the tequila was mighty smooth AND every single time you had a shot of it they brought you this little shot of sangrita.

So after downing about three of these I said "this is so weird because I don't usually drink! Yum, yum!"

And he stopped my hand from downing a fourth shot and said "ummm....if you don't drink I think you should stop and I think we should leave."

Oh boy. Trying to walk out of that restaurant was challenging.

But on the plus side I never got sick and the next morning when I was singing in the apartment he kept asking me "you don't have a headache? You don't have a hangover?"


I hope all this explaining didn't give you a headache this morning. Not that you might have a teensy bit of a headache anyway from possibly consuming a margarita yourself.

But...

Now you can clearly see why my New Years resolution for 2010 MUST BE CONTROLLING THIS TENDENCY.

At first I thought of some easier resolutions such as loosing weight, exercising, or finding the solution for world peace.

But really, what kind of a challenge would that be?

And I'm all about the challenge.

So it's official.

In 2010 I will control my drinking.

There I said it.

It's official.

And now I need to go find a leftover Christmas cookie or a piece of fudge or something.

Finding a resolution is hard work.

And I am exhausted.

Sigh.

Of all the weird New Years traditions...

...I've oftened wondered about the whole eating black-eye peas and/or cabbage ones.

I don't know about you but those two particular items make me... ummm.... ummmm... ummm....

OK, let me phrase this a bit more delicately by quoting a great poet of another generation:

"Beans, beans the magic fruit,
the more you eat the more you toot."

And you can pretty much substitute the word "cabbage" there. At least for me.

But actually I have to tell you I have to use a different tense when referring to this problem....because it actually only USED to and it doesn't ANY MORE!

And no, this isn't an blog-ad for bean-o.

It's not a blog-ad at all.

It's really just part of the full-service I want to offer to you, my lovely and beloved readers.

And here's what it is.

Crystallized ginger.

Yup, you just whip up your favorite "poetry inducing" pot of something but throw in a few finely diced up pieces of crystallized ginger into the pot. It doesn't effect the taste at all AND it eliminates the possibility of having to quote that little poem to a room full of people.

AND ginger is supposed to be very healthful for you!

So pick up a big jar of this stuff and keep it in your fridge.

So that your New Year can be spent in endeavors other then reciting poetry.

You're welcome.

Sigh.